by Sue Watson
But as far as I was concerned my aunt had been a wonderful woman and she seemed as excited as me when I went to stay, giving me special treats, allowing me to mix the ice cream and serve behind the counter. I loved the freedom of life in Appledore. Mum had always been so protective of me, never wanting me to stray far without her, always supervising everything I did. ‘You might burn yourself,’ she’d say if I tried to make her a cup of tea or offered to help in the kitchen.
In Appledore, Sophia allowed me some space and there was a delicious independence in being able to walk to the shop along the front alone. I could play on the beach with new-found friends, and even make tea and coffee – in fact it was asked of me when Sophia was really busy. ‘Put the kettle on, love,’ she’d say, from behind a sweet, swirling vat of ice cold vanilla. And I didn’t scald myself once.
I was a late and only child for Mum and after the problems she’d had carrying babies to term, I know I was precious to her. But the result of her overprotectiveness was that she always kept me on a tight rein and I still trod those safe lines as an adult – never taking risks, always playing it safe. Now I could see how limiting this had been for me. Perhaps if my mum had allowed me to make some mistakes and let go a little I’d be a different person? I might have taken more chances, more opportunities and not been scared to do something different, to have an adventure.
I kept reading on Facebook that I had to do one thing that scared me every day (and I don’t think going to see Blair Witch 2 counted). But from being young I’d always associated taking risks as hurting my mother – I’m sure many people felt this way, but it made me scared to do anything. I wanted to wake up in the morning and wonder where the day would take me, and have something other than cooking, cleaning and working to think about. But all I wondered was where my life was going.
I arrived in the sleepy little village of Appledore mid-morning, and as I stepped from the taxi I felt all my worries slipping away. Wandering through the cobbled lanes of pastel shops and houses, strung with pretty bunting, I felt a tingle. The place hadn’t really changed much, a few new shops had popped up, the pub had had a makeover, but it wasn’t hard to remember things as they were.
I headed for the church where Sophia’s funeral was to be held, memories of my aunt filling my head and heart. I looked forward very much to seeing my cousin, imagining her dressed all in black, looking impossibly glamorous but probably distressed, it was her mother after all. I wondered how often she’d been able to visit from LA, and if she felt guilty about Sophia dying without any family around her. Despite Mum’s harsh words, I knew she felt bad about not being around for Sophia, and again wondered why she and Mum had fallen out so terribly. I wondered too if there was more to Gina’s leaving for LA all those years ago – was it purely to seek her fame and fortune or had something driven her to leave Devon?
These were questions I’d asked myself (and my mother) many times, but to no avail. And on arrival at the church it didn’t look like I’d have the opportunity to ask Gina any of those burning questions. I studied every face in the congregation but couldn’t see her anywhere. The only sign of Sophia’s daughter were a dozen red roses: ‘To Mum, RIP.’ I was incredibly disappointed not to see my cousin;I was also upset to think she hadn’t turned up to her mother’s funeral. Mum and I had our ups and downs, but missing her funeral would be unthinkable.
I spotted a friend of Sophia’s who used to come into the café – she was much older now, but I recognised her. I asked her if Gina would be coming along later and she looked at me like I was mad; ‘Gina? No, she says she’s too busy with work to get here… well, you know Gina.’
But it seemed that perhaps I didn’t know Gina after all?
And later, as I stood at Sophia’s grave, I cried quietly for the sister who wasn’t there and for the daughter whose life was clearly more important than her mother’s death.
I left the church service with little time to spare – and a desire to avoid another funeral buffet – and headed for the village and the reading of Sophia’s will. I had to assume if Gina wasn’t at the funeral she wouldn’t be at the reading of the will either, which was frustrating. I’d hoped we could discuss what to do with the café, especially as this was important to me in terms of a possible income. But walking along the front, I gently pushed away my worries for now, I was back and it felt surprisingly good. The air was fresh and salty and the tide was in, glittering in the sunshine under a big blue sky, and I stood on the edge of the promenade allowing myself a few minutes to take it all in.
This was a special place, and I felt like I’d come home to this lovely little village where the sea ended and the sky began. I’d often come back here in my mind, and I missed it, but hadn’t realised just quite how much until now. I’d been tempted to come on family holidays with the kids and Richard but felt I would be betraying Mum so it had been easier to stay away. I looked out at the vast expanse of sky, big and blue, the seafront shops and houses in complementary pastel shades behind me. And after a breath, I began to walk along the front. In the distance, the sign was blowing in the gentle wind coming from the sea: ‘Caprioni’s – The Ice Cream Café’. I was transported straight back to being six years old and my first memory of being here alone, without my parents.
The café closed about 9 p.m. each night and Gina would put the jukebox on and the two of us would dance in the middle of the café. I remember the heady mix of Bowie, Blondie, The Police, Gary Numan, The Village People as my six-year-old feet tried to copy my older cousin’s graceful, sexy moves. Then the sweet scent of warm chocolate drenching cold ice cream as we made our own sundaes. Illicit ice cream, made to measure in our own creations – lemon, peach and strawberry with raspberry sauce; chocolate and tiramisu with fudge; peanut butter and maple syrup. Gina and I would make all kinds of weird and wonderful concoctions – we didn’t follow the menu and broke every rule, layering fruit with chocolate and peppermint before hurling on a million sugar sprinkles. Sometimes we’d go along the freezer putting a blob of every ice cream and every kind of syrup into sundae glasses and creating a spectacle of colour and crunch and creaminess. Two kids in a candy shop, literally. We’d then take a spoon each and share the towering confection, until we couldn’t eat any more. Afterwards, Gina would reapply her lipstick and I’d watch, entranced, my lips moving with hers as she slicked on strawberry gloss. Gina was everything I ever wanted to be.
During those summers, Aunt Sophia showed me how to make the finest ice creams, sharing old family recipes her parents had brought over from Italy, inspired by the seaside town of Sorrento. I loved her gentle accent, the way she rolled her Rs and the dramatic hand gestures. She stirred and poured and tasted, delighting in the ice-cold crunch of hazelnut, the rich coffee liqueur and creamy mascarpone of tiramisu ice cream, the sweet-sourness of lemon granita. I hoped Sophia had written the old Italian ice cream recipes down or they would be lost for ever, and back here now, I couldn’t bear to think that I’d never taste Sophia’s gelato again.
My eyes sought the pink and green striped café awning I remembered so well, and I looked beyond my immediate eyeline to find it, eager to get back there. I felt the years peel away as I recalled black and white Athena posters of good-looking boys on Vespas, girls drinking milkshakes, chrome coffee machines, a jukebox and peppermint green and pink tables. As a child I was convinced this was the ice cream equivalent of Willy Wonka’s factory, and those tables would taste as sweet as candy canes.
And I could taste the cold bliss of the ice cream now as I approached the café; every shade and flavour of swirling creamy ice whipped and piled into oblong tubs behind glass, just waiting to be chosen. My child’s eyes would dance across the creamy rainbow, my memory and taste buds aching for the previous summer’s joy. And they never let me down, sharp Sorrento lemon, ice green pistachio, pastel pink raspberry drenched in a fruity sting of scarlet strawberry purée, all as lovely as I’d remembered. My mouth was watering now, my tongue tingling at the thought o
f the special shelf above the ice creams where jars upon jars of jewel-like sugary treats glittered. From spiky citrus sherbet to clunky chocolate buttons – they made ice cream sing when layered in a tall glass and drenched in syrup.
Arriving outside Caprioni’s, I stopped abruptly, my ice cream memories melting as I saw immediately how much the place had changed. The strawberry ice cream pink paintwork was now puce, dirty and peeling, and the once beautiful windows were steamy and filled with fluorescent star shapes advertising cones of chips and burgers. But where were the ice cream posters, the huge pictures advertising the summery sundaes, the delicious waffle cones stacked with a rainbow of flavours and sprinkles? What had happened to the beautiful café of my childhood, the one I’d kept in my head all these years, the one I’d dreamed of returning to one day? I held my breath as I walked towards the door, just hoping inside would be just as it had been thirty years before.
5
Magnums, Cornettos and Day-Glo Disillusion
I was shocked, this place had been so well preserved in my memory I’d stupidly assumed it had remained exactly the same. But the fifties seafront glamour of my memories had been replaced with Day-Glo disillusion.
I opened the door and stepped inside, hoping that the interior wouldn’t be so bad… it was worse. I was horrified to see the peppermint-coloured tables had been replaced by fake teak. I looked further, praying for a miracle, but the counter was grubby glass containing wrapped biscuits and muffins that had seen better days. What had happened to the ice cream café? I hadn’t even seen a tub of vanilla let alone the exotic flavours my aunt used to make.How bad things must have been for Sophia, here all alone, no family, just an ailing business. I suddenly felt a surge of overwhelming grief for my aunt, and a sense of hopelessness that it was all too late.
The guy behind the counter was reading a book and looking distinctly uninterested in his surroundings. I didn’t blame him, this was like a death to me – Caprioni’s had been my past and a place I’d often escaped to in my head and now it was gone.
‘Yes?’ he said, clearly annoyed by the interruption.
‘I’m Sophia’s niece,’ I said.
‘Whoopie do,’ was his response. He didn’t even look up from his book.
‘I have an appointment… I’ve come to meet with the solicitor, Mr Shaw.’ I waited for his response, I thought he might be surprised we were meeting here rather than the solicitor’s office, but he didn’t flinch.
‘Through the back, the second door on the left,’ he said, enunciating this loudly and clearly like I didn’t speak English.
‘Thank you,’ I sniffed and walked through the café, averting my eyes, unable to look any more at the neglect, the awful transformation, while trying not to breathe in the grease and mashed potato that hung in the steamy air. Just before I opened the door to go through into the back of the café, I turned and called over to ask if they still sold ice cream.
‘Yeah,’ he said, without looking up. ‘Magnum or Cornetto?’
‘Nothing thank you,’ I said, realising we’d not only lost Sophia, but every last remnant of Caprioni’s Ice Cream Café.
An overwhelming feeling of sadness enveloped me once more as I opened the door and walked into what I knew would not be the Narnia-like vision of the past I’d hoped for. The kitchen where Sophia had once made that wonderful ice cream was quiet and empty, the surfaces covered in dust, no ice cream maker, no huge bowls of whipping cream and crates of eggs, just boxes filled with paper cups and cheap serviettes.
I couldn’t see any sign of the solicitor, so just waited, leaning on the cleanest part of the countertop near dusty boxes and stacks of ledgers just imagining the past. So much had happened here. Sophia had lived and worked a lifetime in this kitchen, and her own father before her, from the minute they arrived one chilly spring day from their home in Sorrento where the lemons were as big as your head.
I was bereft, I felt like I’d lost a piece of my childhood. Could I have done something to save this place before now? I’d never visited, never stayed in touch with Aunt Sophia, I just put my memories of Appledore in a jar and preserved them there, in order to protect Mum, but perhaps in recent years I should have been stronger.
My own family history was here in these walls, stuff I didn’t know and would probably never know now, and along with the loss I felt this huge weight of guilt descend on me. My aunt was dead and the family café lost and I’d allowed it to be washed away with the tide, refusing to engage with it because it might hurt my mother’s feelings. But with Gina away, I had been the nearest thing to a daughter Sophia had – and I’d neglected her, along with the café.
I hadn’t written to Sophia except once, in my twenties, to ask if she had an address for Gina in LA. I’d explained that I hadn’t told Mum I was writing, but that I wanted to keep in touch with Gina. Sophia had eventually written back and said ‘it probably isn’t wise for you to contact Gina – it will just bring everything to the surface. It’s best for everyone that we make a clean break.’ I was confused and heart-broken and never tried to contact her again, but now, seeing the decline in this once beautiful place, I regretted that. I should have visited Sophia to see how she was, listened to her as she talked of ‘the old country’, lost forever now.
Sophia’s stories had died with her, along with the secrets of her ice cream made. Sophia kept those recipes in her head, a secret only she knew. And sitting in the café kitchens now waiting for the solicitor to arrive I felt myself deflate. Despite saying I wouldn’t want to actually run the ice cream café, I suppose I’d harboured a dream to come back here and take on a thriving ice cream empire, if only as landlord. But having seen what the café had become, I doubted Gina would be interested in trying to resurrect the past, I wasn’t sure it was even possible, given the state of the place. My cousin had her new life in LA, away from sleepy old Appledore, and she clearly wasn’t interested in the past – she hadn’t even made it back for her mother’s funeral.
Perhaps we could sell after all? God knows, I needed the money now I didn’t have a job, and it would give me some breathing space before I found work. Yes, that would be the safest, most sensible thing to do.
But hadn’t I always done the safest, most sensible thing – and look where it had got me? Instead of being an out of work single mother with no career I could be queen of my own ice cream café with plenty to post on my Facebook page? I could come to Appledore and save Caprioni’s from its fake teak and stale muffin death? I daren’t even hope for something like this… it wouldn’t be my decision anyway, even if we had equal shares, it would ultimately have to be Gina’s choice.
Just as I was wondering if the solicitor was a no-show, I heard a door opening and closing. Someone was shuffling through into the kitchens – an old, greying man in a suit with a dickie bow probably, the kind my mother met through her various dating apps. But when Mr Shaw, from ‘Shaw Associates’, wandered in I was amazed. He was late thirties, with a five o’clock shadow and hair that looked like he’d just been caught in a tidal wave – which it turned out he had… well almost.
‘Sorry I’m late, I was on a dive,’ he said as he plonked a very battered rucksack onto the counter.
‘Ben,’ he reached out his hand to shake mine; ‘I’m Ben Shaw from Shaw Associates.’
‘Well that’s a new one,’ I laughed.
He looked bemused and scratched his head as he looked at me.
‘I mean – “sorry I’m late I was on a dive” isn’t an excuse I’ve ever heard for a business meeting,’ I smiled and he smiled back, a dimple on each cheek.
‘I thought you’d be older,’ I said. ‘Are you the actual Shaw Associate?’
He laughed. ‘One of them. Though my father’s the real deal – it’s a family business. We used to be Shaw and Son, but then I left and he decided to kill me off,’ he laughed, ‘then I came back, so he decided I was an associate.’
It looked to me like he’d been forced kicking and screaming into the
life of a lawyer and would really rather spend his days in the sea.
‘So, was the dive good?’ I said, like I knew about these things.
‘Challenging, cold tide, lack of visibility, but then it’s Devon, not Hawaii,’ he shot me a longing look as he opened up his rucksack.
‘No, I don’t suppose it is. So you’re a diving lawyer?’
‘More of a lawyering diver,’ he said, then looked puzzled; ‘if that’s a thing.’ He smiled again and those dimples appeared and I thought, Oh yes… that’s a thing.
‘You’re lucky I didn’t turn up in my wetsuit,’ he smiled.
I reckoned I’d be luckier if he had, and tried to pretend I hadn’t just swept my eyes from head to toe imagining him in tight rubber. I didn’t know what had got into me, it must have been the emotions of the day coupled with the sea air, I hadn’t entertained thoughts like this about any man for a long time.
I looked away as he took off his jacket, I hadn’t been in the proximity of a good-looking man for a while and there was only so much I could take. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and lifted himself onto the kitchen counter – with rather muscular forearms. I gasped, I really hadn’t expected the family solicitor to be in tight faded jeans, and a T-shirt emblazoned with – ‘The Deeper You Go the Better it Feels’. I had to look away.
‘So, have you explored Appledore?’ he said, settling onto the countertop.
‘Not this time, I used to know it well, but today – I came straight from the funeral.’
‘Oh yes, of course, sorry about your aunt. My father was there.’
‘Oh that’s nice,’ I said stupidly, not really quite sure what the protocol was regarding funeral attendance. ‘Thanks for fitting in the reading on the same day; it saved me making several journeys.’